Chasing Butterflies
by haldolhs
Summary: Ciel is held hostage by personal demons. Sebastian vows to do whatever it takes to recover his lost master. Sebastian/Ciel. Angst, smut, and a big, gooey heaping helping of marshmallow fluff.


In retrospect, perhaps sending Sebastian off to Paris in search of a man who didn't exist wasn't such a brilliant idea.

Arms stretched high above his head, manacles cutting deep into the heels of his palms, Ciel attempted to relieve the pressure by bearing the bulk of his weight on the balls of his aching feet. He didn't know exactly how he ended up hanging from his wrists in the middle of the dim and dank warehouse, but he suspected the chemical, metallic taste lingering in his mouth was to blame. The last he remembered, Roger Winston, Esquire and trafficker of fresh corpses, had been lying facedown against the damp concrete floor, pinned there like a struggling insect to a corkboard beneath the crushing weight of Ciel's knee while the earl quite cheerfully strangled him with the blue silk tie his butler had gifted him for his twentieth birthday.

_He'd been alone. I was certain I only saw one man. He didn't have a partner . . ._

Now the vermin paced before him, each slap of his hard-soled shoes against the wet slab resounding like a gun-blast through the clearing fog of Ciel's too-heavy head. The sight of Sebastian's gift draped loosely around Winston's neck like some ill-won Lady's favor only added insult to injury—although watching the man gulp long draughts of the foul air eased the sting, some. Suffused with the stench of formaldehyde and moldering decay, the thick atmosphere of the warehouse was nearly suffocating and Ciel held out hope the sick bastard might still choke to death after all.

As if he'd heard the thought, Winston halted mid-pace and assaulted Ciel with a beady-eyed glare. "Higher." The tall, scrawny man rasped, his long, skeletal fingers tracing over the friction burns just below his prominent Adam's apple. "I wanna watch this arrogant ponce dance for me on his tippy toes before I drop him to his knees, begging."

"Dance? I was under the impression you preferred your captives far less animated," Ciel sneered. In his mind's eye, he saw Sebastian shake his head in silent admonishment, telling him that taunting a madman who had him chained to his mercy was foolish, indeed, but Ciel didn't care. He'd very nearly ended the sad sack who now gawped at his nerve, and he'd finish the job just as soon as his brain stopped buzzing and he regained the whole of his wits. He'd manage just fine without his butler's aid, too, and prove, once and for all, just who was truly the master of every damned domain.

_I'll see you serve as my butler in Hell, demon. Don't think just because I succumbed to a moment of weakness and confessed my . . ._

The screeching clack and grind of a winding winch ripped Ciel out of his thoughts and his arms nearly tore from their sockets as his body yanked violently upward. He bit down hard on his pained cry and stared defiantly into the muddy eyes of his captor, who gazed back at him with brightening interest and an expression of growing anticipation Ciel didn't care for at all.

"Rupert. Fetch the cart." A wicked smile blazed across Roger Winston's pallid face.

"Righty-O!" A voice called amicably from somewhere behind Ciel. "You want I should bring the tubes and the tanks, too?"

"Nah. Just the cart will do." Winston tongued his lower lip and leered at Ciel. "Once we get done playing with the Queen's fancy pet, we'll see if there's anything left worth preserving."

Rupert's resounding whoop of delight prickled Ciel's skin and chilled in him a way which made the cool, damp air of the warehouse feel positively balmy. Winston watched Ciel intently, and a broad, yellow-toothed grin split his face once more.

"The black market trade for fetid flesh must be much more lucrative than I'd believed, if it affords a butler to filthy scum like you," Ciel said, his thoughts on his own butler, who he yearned for with a sense of infuriating yet growing desperation. Fire blazed through his arms and hands. The pain bordered on excruciating, but it helped sharpen his mind, if nothing else. Soon they'd be numb and useless, and that would be much worse. It might prove damning, in fact, but there was no help for it. The toes of his shoes barely brushed the concrete now and he couldn't use his feet to support his weight at all. Once he lost the leverage of his upper body, he would truly be at Winston's mercy.

"Rup's not my _butler_, he's my brother," Winston said. His fingertips ran slowly back and forth over the tail of tie trailing over his breast as if entranced by the texture of the silk. If only the bastard would take two steps closer, Ciel could swing forward, lash out with a swift upward kick, and send Winston's bony hook of a nose straight up into writhing mass of maggots that served for his brain. Then those spindly fingers would never molest another tie, or anything else, ever again.

_My intel made no mention of a brother . . ._

"A high and haughty rich arse like yourself probably believes a brother isn't half as good as a servant who caters to your every whim," Winston continued, "but I don't have to _pay _Rup to have my back. That's the blessing of _family_ . . . not that _you'd_ know. Heard yours was murdered, and all the Phantomhive millions weren't enough to buy 'em back from the dead." Winston chuckled, his lecherous fingers still violating Ciel's favorite tie. "But I'm a generous individual. Very soon, I'm gonna let Rupert have _your _back, and you won't even have to pay him for the pleasure."

Buttocks clenching, Ciel bit back the insult burning on his tongue in favor of taking Sebastian's advice for once. _That acrid tongue of yours is a dangerous defense mechanism, _he heard his butler say, _one that's like to get you killed before you summon me, one of these days. _Considering the fire in his arms was dying to pins and needles, attempting to summon his butler now might not be a bad idea. Even for someone with Sebastian's capabilities, the distance between Paris and London would take more than an instant to cover. But then, he hadn't spent the past decade beneath the tutelage of a powerful demon without learning a few tricks of his own.

_I got myself into this mess, and I'll get myself out. It's high past time Sebastian sees I don't need him at every damned turn, the smug bastard. Strutting around the manor these past weeks like a bloody peacock, gloating as if he's won some damned . . ._

"Got it!" The squeal of rusted wheels rolling across wet concrete punctuated Rupert's excited shout, which reverberated through Ciel's head as if the man had yelled directly in his ear. Even Winston startled, his infernal fingers finally dropping from Ciel's tie as he whipped toward the sound of his brother's voice.

His captor momentarily distracted, Ciel forced his dead fingers around the thick chain attached to the manacles. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he tested the strength of his numb arms and managed to lift himself a few inches off the floor. It wasn't much, but it would be enough leverage to put up a decent fight; enough to incapacitate the dull-witted brothers Grimm, surely, especially if Rupert proved as scrawny as Roger.

_Wonderful. Now, if I can just figure a way out of these blasted manacles . . ._

Rupert wheeled the cart into view and stunned Ciel out of further plans for escape with sudden understanding as to why he'd missed the man's presence when he'd cased the warehouse before his attack. Roger and Rupert Winston were not merely brothers. They were identical twins.

_Bloody Hell. They're even wearing identical clothing. Maybe Mummy still dresses them just alike . . ._A shiver ran over Ciel's spine.

Rupert stopped the cart beside his brother. "So what's the plan, Rog, huh?" he gushed, his expression so like that of an eager puppy Ciel realized the twins weren't completely identical after all. Roger had apparently gotten the lion's share of the intelligence.

"You tell me," Roger smiled, and nodded his head toward the cart. "Pick your game, Rup. You get to play first, this time."

Ciel darted his gaze to the cart and his stomach lurched. Covered in rust, it bore an assortment of metal instruments, most of which were spattered with spots of reddish brown. Knives and saws and a giant pair of shears lay haphazardly amongst a plethora of not so recognizable items, one of which resembled a miniature, cylindrical cricket bat.

_No. I won't call him . . .I . . .I can handle this._

"Really?" Rupert's smile lit his face like a child's on Christmas morning, but then his shoulders slumped, his smile plummeted, and his lower lip quivered. "But . . .I . . .I was bad, Rog. I forgot, and . . .and I . . .I took off his pirate's patch and his pretty coat . . .and I . . . I was going to . . .I _wanted _to . . ."

"But you didn't." Roger said gently. He lifted his brother's trembling chin. "You forgot, but then you remembered, and you did exactly what you were supposed to do. You saved my life, Rupert. Now you deserve a reward."

"I do?" Rupert looked confused, and then his face lit up again as if a switch had been flipped. "I did! I do!"

Roger laughed and gestured to the cart. "Go on, then! Anything you want."

Without a second's hesitation, Rupert snatched up something rectangular that looked for all the world like the grater Sebastian used for shredding hard cheeses—were it his butler in the habit of first neglecting to clean his kitchen tools and then leaving them out in the damp for weeks on end. Rupert approached Ciel slowly, his filthy toy held out before him like an offering, a glistening string of saliva slipping from the corner of his gaping maw.

Ciel's stomach heaved. _Keep it together, Phantomhive! Almost close enough. Be ready. _

"What in the Hell is that thing?" Ciel yelled louder than he'd intended, and he didn't need to feign his expression of abject horror as he tightened his grip on the chain and tensed his muscles in preparation. _Just another second, now . . ._

"What? The file?" Roger grinned, his watchful gaze drawn to the item in question. "Dead useful, that. See, no matter how well we preserve and store our products, they tend to grow a patch of mold here and there after a few days. If used carefully, the file removes the blight without damaging the tissue beneath. Rupert, though, has an aversion to anything that alters the smoothness of skin. I believe he intends to remove your nipples."

"Yup." Rupert said from no more than two feet in front of him, and Ciel cursed himself for becoming distracted by his intended distraction. "Say! Your eye is a funny color, huh? Looks like some kinda star on it, too."

"_Yup_." Ciel grunted, and then he hefted himself off the floor, swung his weight backwards and kicked up with the full force of his right leg. Pain wracked through his body with such intensity it rendered the world grey, but he didn't need to see in color to know he missed his intended mark. Blood and teeth flew from Rupert's shattered jaw, and the man staggered backwards a few feet, his eyes widening before they rolled back in his head and he fell to the concrete with a bone-jarring thud.

Screams. There should be screams and cries of rage and dismay now, Ciel thought wildly, his eyes locked on Rupert's still form. Then he felt the sharp edge of a blade graze the skin above his carotid and his blood froze in his veins.

"That was very, very rude," Roger's voice rasped, his breath hot and moist against Ciel's ear. "Try something like that with me, and I'll be happy to bleed you dry like the pig you are. I really hope you don't, though, 'cause I'd much rather hear your grunts and cries while I bugger you, and that pretty round arse of yours will be so much tighter if you're not already dead."

A hand slid over the back of Ciel's trousers and gripped his left buttock.

_Seb . . ._

"Shouldn't you go check on him?" Fighting the intense urge to squirm away from that hand, from the mouth at his ear, Ciel barely dared to breathe. "He's still alive, I'm certain."

"Rupert's got a hard head and no brains to scramble. He'll be fine." Winston's tongue flicked over the edge of his ear, and Ciel grimaced, swallowing hard against a cry of disgust.

"Gonna need a good dentist, though. I'll see you pay extra for that." The blade cut shallowly into Ciel's throat as Winston shifted his grip and stepped around in front of him. His expression a mirror of his brother's former excited anticipation, he licked his liver-hued lips as he ripped Ciel's shirt open with his free hand and sent pearl buttons clattering across the damp floor. Those horrid, spindly fingers grappled at Ciel's bare chest, searching until they pinched around the hard nub of his right nipple. "A pity Rupert still has the file. Lucky for us, my fingernails are overdue for a clipping. It'll make it a little easier to tear these off, yeah?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Ciel muttered, staring directly into the bright, beady eyes of his molester. Christ, but the man was tall. He had to be six foot eight, at least, although Ciel outweighed him by forty pounds or more. Winston was skin and bones. If he moved quickly, at just the right moment, surely he could use his weight to topple the bastard without getting his throat slit in the process, and then . . .

"Not just yet, then," Winston murmured, tweaking the nipple once more before trailing his fingers down Ciel's abdomen and leaving a sensation of squirming maggots in his wake. "I rather like nipples, myself."

_Stay still. Bear with it, and he'll drop his guard. Just a little is all I need . . ._

Winston's arm snaked around Ciel's hips and pulled them forward, his face flushing, his breath quickening to a soft pant as he grinded his pitifully small erection against Ciel's pelvis. The knife blade grazed a little lower down his throat, its pressure lightening, and he should move now, he knew. He should pull his weight back, lower his head to protect his neck and throw himself forward with everything he had, but the rank, sour breath filling his nostrils, the feel of those awful fingers digging against the fabric of his trousers and into the cleft of his buttocks, the insult of Winston's revolting arousal jabbing mercilessly against his groin paralyzed him.

_Sebastian . . ._

Sudden as a summer storm, the damp, fetid atmosphere electrified. The dim overhead lights flared, the air snapped and crackled, and Ciel felt _him _like a blessed blast of simultaneous heat and tingling chill that instantly thawed his frozen limbs and warmed his blood while prickling his skin.

"Rogg!" Rupert cried, clawing at the floor in futile attempt to push himself upright. "Sumfing baaaa's 'ere!"

Winston's knife clattered to the floor, and Ciel saw the sparse hair on his balding head standing on end as the man dropped his hand from Ciel's rump and twisted to stare gape-jawed at the inky, lightning-streaked shadow growing darker not three feet from where Rupert desperately struggled to rise. "What in the Hell is that thing?"

"That would be my butler," Ciel smirked. "I might pay him to have my back, but he throws in these dramatic entrances for free."

"Your _but . . ."_

"You dared to touch and befoul _my _master, he who belongs to _me._" A guttural, soul-chilling voice thundered throughout the warehouse. Its enraged reverberation shook the hanging light fixtures and opened an inch-wide wall-to-wall fissure in the concrete floor.

"Uh-oh," Ciel muttered, his own hair standing on end now, even despite his elated sense of relief. "I'm afraid you've riled Sebastian into a bit of a temper, Winston."

"Call it off," Winston breathed, dropping to his knees. A foul stench drifted up from the back of his breeches. "Please. Tell it I'm sorry . . ."

Ciel couldn't grant Winston's plea even if he wanted to, for he was rendered quite speechless by the sight of Sebastian taking to form. Eyes embers from Hell's hottest fire and thickly rimmed with ash glowed out from a severe alabaster face framed with long, rolling waves of glossy, pitch-black hair. Rows of serrated fangs glittered behind an ebony-lipped snarl. Bared from the shoulders, his arms were as preternaturally pale as his face, roped with lean muscle and lined with black veins. They ended with his butler's familiar, strong but elegant hands, although his onyx fingernails were thrice as long and sharpened to lethal points. The rest of his body was clad in the black, finely-scaled skin of some animal surely no mortal had ever laid eyes upon, and it hugged his every contour, leaving nothing to the imagination and informing Ciel that however Sebastian chose to present himself in his human guise, in this form he was wholly unaltered. The shiny hide gripped him all the way down to the pair of pointed-toe, six-inch stiletto-heeled boots which rendered him every inch as tall as Winston and accentuated his strong and shapely legs. Most stunning of all was the massive set of black-feathered wings folded over his back. Iridescent even beneath the dim light, their silken tips grazed the floor.

Ciel's heart stuttered and his lungs burned, demanding the air he'd ceased to breathe, so completely he'd lost himself in Sebastian's monstrous, devastating beauty. _Mine. He's mine, _he thought and gasped, and his heart thudded into duty once more.

Below him, Winston screamed over and over again, his purpled lips stretched into a tight grimace around his gaping mouth, but the volume of the man's terror was tinny and distant, almost as if it were a recording played on a Victrola behind the closed door of another room.

"I shall take great pleasure in ripping your violating hands from your wrists," Sebastian growled above the clack of his stiletto heels. He swept down and hauled a flailing Rupert Winston off the floor by the nape of his neck without missing a beat as he approached.

"Please," Roger Winston screeched. He reached back and clutched Ciel's leg, his fingernails biting into the skin of Ciel's calf straight through the thick woolen blend of his trousers.

Sebastian roared. Two of the overhead lights exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, and Ciel startled himself with a surprised yelp as Winston's hand tore away from his leg and disappeared into a blurred flurry of motion a mere yard away from where he dangled. Although his eyes couldn't follow, the Winston twins' screams reverberated throughout the warehouse at sudden full volume, and as he heard their timbre change from alert terror to mindless agony, Ciel pictured the scene within the dark whirl quite clearly enough.

An eternity passed in the few moments it took before Sebastian stepped out of the blur, the ruffled feathers of his wings settling smooth as his fiery gaze raked over Ciel, and then darted to the mutilated bodies at his feet. The twins laid entwined in a grotesque heap of blood and gore, their shredded torsos bound together with ropes of intestine, their faces identical masks of blank, bulging eyes and wide, open mouths stuffed with genitalia. In death it wasn't his greater intelligence that differentiated Roger Winston from his brother, but his hands, which had been torn from his wrists, folded together as if in prayer, and shoved into the split of his bony backside.

"Do you like it?" Sebastian chuckled. "I think I'm going to call it _Brotherly Love._"

In all honesty, Ciel was deeply moved by the depth of rage he saw in Sebastian's impromptu artistry. His butler had created the exact masterpiece Ciel would have commissioned with his order, had he issued one. Yet, he should feel infuriated by Sebastian's nerve. How dare he present himself in such . . . in such brazen attire, and sporting a set of wings, of all things, as if he thought himself some ridiculous dark avenging angel! And to take it upon himself to deliver such ultimate wrath without command! What if he'd intended the twins stand trial for their crimes? Not that he'd ever entertained any such notion, but even so, his butler had just completely undermined his authority and disregarded his role as master. The fact that Sebastian had blown in, declared him _his, _and exacted his own personal vengeance on Her Majesty's quarry made Ciel feel flush all over. His heart beat too hard and too fast. No, he didn't like it. He _loved _it, and the admission both frightened and infuriated him.

"What's this? Have you no opinion, My Lord?" Sebastian pinned Ciel with a heated glare. "I find such a prospect terribly hard to believe."

Forcing a scowl, Ciel's gaze traveled over the length of his demon, drinking in every inch of his terrible glory before meeting Sebastian's eyes, those flaming irises calming to crimson now, his face softening to its familiar human visage and donning an irate, if mildly amused, expression. "What are you doing here, Sebastian? You're supposed to be in Paris."

"When have I ever ignored your summons, Young Master?" Sebastian smirked. His heels clicked sharply against the concrete, punctuating each slow step of his sauntered approach. "Did you truly expect I'd leave you to be tortured, raped and murdered?"

"I didn't summon you!" Ciel seethed.

"On the contrary," Sebastian stood before him where he dangled, eye to eye, and Ciel felt the fury radiating off him with each pulse of his heart. "You've been summoning me since the moment I pretended to set out on your wild goose chase."

Ciel's bloodless fingers slipped from the chains. "What do you mean, _pretended? _Are you telling me you _defied _my order?"

"Yes." Sebastian hissed, his nose an inch from Ciel's. "Jack Stapleton is a fictional villain penned by our friend Arthur, not Roger Winston's most profitable customer. There was no need to search Paris for a man who can only be found within the pages of a bloody book. So now, Ciel, why don't you explain to me exactly why you intended to send me off chasing butterflies while you did your damnedest to serve yourself up to filth on a silver platter?"

"You forget your place! Ever since I told you . . ." Ciel flushed. "I realize it's difficult for you to see clearly around your bloated ego, but I don't need you at every damned turn, Sebastian. And I didn't summon you. I had this situation well under control."

"Ah. Yes, of course." Sebastian glanced up at the manacles, the light of sudden understanding bleeding through the darkest clouds of his ire. "This was about control. Power. Your sense of dominance lost beneath the utterance of a few irrelevant words . . .I should have known. I think I did know, actually."

_Irrelevant?_

"What are you on about, man?" Knowing full well the answer to his question, Ciel flushed all the redder. "Never mind that. Just get me down from here."

Sebastian took a step back, crossed his arms over his chest, and laughed. The black veins were less prominent now, and Sebastian's color more natural overall. In fact, from the neck up he looked just the same as he always did. The skin-tight attire remained, although Ciel saw the scales had disappeared, leaving its texture smooth except for the strange, long, silver-toothed fasteners which had appeared both top and bottom where there'd been nothing of the sort before. Only the wings and the boots remained unchanged.

Despite the stench permeating the warehouse and the mangled bodies not three feet away, despite the increasing intensity of the pain radiating through his torso from his overtaxed shoulders, despite his utter and infuriating helplessness, Ciel felt himself stir. It had been three long weeks since he'd last seen Sebastian in any state other than that of consummate servant, his countenance professional and benign, his livery impeccable. To gaze upon Sebastian in such shameless attire after having had starved himself for so long, to bask in his seductive magnificence and power and impropriety was too much to bear. Neither able to hide his arousal nor curse his traitorous prick into submission, he knew Sebastian was well aware of his obvious desire and Ciel suspected it was the reason the bastard hadn't reverted completely to his human form.

_And now those fasteners, plainly telling me that second skin of his can come off. What in the Hell is he planning? _His body responded with a shiver of anticipation which swelled in his groin and throbbed through his burgeoning erection, and Ciel, enraged with himself, attempted to cover by impaling his amused butler with a scathing glare. "Have you gone deaf? I said, _get me down_."

"Rest assured, my hearing is perfectly intact, My Lord. You've made it clear I've rudely intruded upon your well-controlled situation," Sebastian said with an expression of faux regret. "I wouldn't dream of further stepping on your toes . . . although that _does_ seem a needless worry, as they're quite airborne at the moment. In any case, far be it from me to impinge upon your ability to free yourself. Perhaps it would be best if I waited outside . . ."

"No!" Ciel cringed at the amusement sparkling in Sebastian's eyes, and then summoned all the righteous dignity he could muster. "Had you not barged in uninvited, I'd be well out of these chains by now, but thanks to your untimely antics I've been forced to hang here for far longer than I'd intended, and my arms are . . ."

"Weak?" Sebastian supplied. "Numb? Useless?"

"Yes! You smug bastard! Now get me down!"

"Oh, very well," Sebastian sighed. Dropping his arms from his chest, he squared his shoulders and darted his glance to a point above Ciel's head, "Though I don't feel the name-calling is strictly necessary."

The clang and groan of the winch killed Ciel's biting reply. His feet felt like lead as they met the floor, his legs gelatinous, his knees non-existent. Sebastian grasped his hips with both hands and held him upright just as he felt himself give way.

"Head up." Sebastian said. "Mind the chain, now."

Ciel looked up and craned his head out of the way as Sebastian wrapped a steadying arm around his waist and used the other to guide Ciel's dead arms down between them. The rust-caked manacles were fused together and he'd been suspended by a single rope of equally rusted chain link. Reddish-brown flakes coated both of his bloodless palms, and his stomach roiled. "Sebastian, tell me that's not what it looks like."

"Merely rust," Sebastian murmured. The winch squealed to a stop, and he wrapped his other arm around Ciel's shoulders. "Your recovery will be quicker if you remain upright and work your muscles gently, but it will be easier if you rest your weight against me."

_Not bloody likely, _Ciel thought even as he leaned forward and melted against his butler. He silently cursed the length of chain preventing total contact as he rested his head against Sebastian's shoulder and sighed with relief. The smooth, black fabric that clung to his demon like a second skin actually felt like skin beneath his cheek. It probably _was _skin, for that matter, but it was warm and soft and it smelled like pumpkin spices and crisp autumn air, and he breathed deep Sebastian's familiar scent, not caring one whit whose hide he wore.

His limbs burned. Ciel forced himself to fight against the pain, to clench and unclench his fingers and toes, to work blood back into his calves and thighs and arms and biceps while Sebastian deeply massaged the knots first from one shoulder and then the other before working his strong fingers over the back of Ciel's neck.

At long last the flames quelled to a dull ache and his body felt like it belonged to him again. Ciel straightened within the supportive circle of Sebastian's arms cautiously and discovered his legs willing to support his weight. "I'm fine. You can let go of me now, Sebastian."

"Are you certain? You were suspended by your wrists for nearly three-quarters of an hour," Sebastian cautioned, and he didn't lessen the strength of his embrace. "Even I would need a moment to recover circulation after such an ordeal."

"Was it really that long?" Ciel started as realization hit him and pushed back hard against Sebastian's arms, glaring up at him. "How in the _Hell _do you know how long I was dangling there? Were you here the whole time? Were you _watching?"_

Without a word, Sebastian released him slowly, his fingertips lingering on hip and shoulder before they drifted away.

Ciel stumbled a half-step backward and shook off Sebastian's ready hands with a growl. "_Answer _me!"

"Yes, I was watching," Sebastian said, dropping his arms to his sides. "I've been watching you like a hawk since the moment you ordered me out of the manor. How else was I supposed to discover your reasons for wanting me indisposed? It wasn't as if you were going to _tell _me."

"You're admitting you were here this whole time." Ciel's blood raced, and he thrust his bound wrists toward Sebastian in accusation. "You're telling me you _allowed _that half-wit to drug me and do god knows what else before chaining me up like a corpse to be bled, that you . . ."

"_I_ didn't _allow_ that depraved piece of filth to do anything. _You _did." Sebastian ripped a pale hand through his glossy hair, shaking his head minutely as he glowered down at Ciel. Then he dropped his arm and sighed. "Now, though, I understand why. Those three blasted words."

_You don't understand. You couldn't possibly._

"Shut up!" Feeling simultaneously flushed and chilled, Ciel swallowed hard against the tight, rising burn in his throat and shook his extended wrists at Sebastian. "Release me."

"Certainly." Sebastian smiled. "I truly would like nothing more than to get you home and wash the stench of the filth from your skin, but not before we can both be certain you won't risk your life again with another foolish attempt to recover the power and control you seem so certain you've lost."

"Have you gone completely around the bend?" Rebuffing the thrill of anticipation elicited by the glimmer he saw in Sebastian's eyes, Ciel thrust his wrists forward, butted Sebastian center chest, and moved him not at all. "Release me. Now."

"Now, now, Mr. Phantomhive." Sebastian clucked. His wings rustled, the black feathers rippling as if caught by a light breeze. "You will be released after your lesson, which you may decide to learn the easy way, or the hard way. The choice is entirely yours."

"I'm not going to play with you, Sebastian." Ciel growled, incensed, though he didn't know whether he was angrier with Sebastian's condescending and inopportune channeling of Professor Michaelis or with his own mutinous flush of desire. "I'm tired. I'm filthy and I'm sore and I want to go home. Now."

"Have you decided to master this lesson the easy way, then?" Sebastian quirked his eyebrow.

"Bloody Hell! Yes, Sebastian. By all means! I'll take the easy way."

"Splendid." Sebastian clapped his hands together once and raised them to rest against his chin, his gaze heating, his expression skeptical. "All you need to do is admit the truth."

"The truth?" Ciel glared back into the intensity of Sebastian's regard and silently commanded his reawakening cock to behave. "What _truth_?"

"Admit you're glad and relieved that I'm here. Admit you never wanted to send me away, and that you yearned for me constantly while you thought me gone. Admit I was the first thought you had every morning, and the last thought you entertained every night. Admit you've missed my scent, my touch, the taste of my kiss, the warmth and weight of my body against yours." Sebastian reached out and gently stroked a lock of hair back from Ciel's temple. "Say it again. Tell me you love me, Ciel."

It took a force of will to not lean his face into Sebastian's touch. "You've lost your bleeding mind, you _arrogant ponce_."

Sebastian dropped his hand and sighed. "The hard way it is, then." He took a step back and snatched a riding crop out of thin air.

Ciel felt strangely surreal as he watched a winged Sebastian dressed in skin-tight Hell-only-knew-what slap the leather tress of Professor Michaelis' 'lesson enhancer' of choice against his open palm as if testing the sting of its bite. Beneath the imposing height afforded Sebastian by his boots and the old, familiar sight of the crop in his hand, Ciel suddenly felt very much like a child again, except, rather than a grim determination to avoid the smack of the crop, he felt an inexplicable sense of longing.

_I can't possibly _want _him to hit me with that thing, _Ciel insisted to himself even as his traitorous cock throbbed in disagreement. Stunned speechless, he tore his gaze away from the crop to see he wasn't the only one aroused. Sebastian's sorry excuse for breeches brazenly displayed his growing erection.

"Unfasten your trousers," Sebastian commanded, ripping Ciel's attention from his butler's crotch to his face, which bore an oddly gentle expression devoid of both Professor Michaelis' typical smug authority and his demon's smirking arrogance.

"Perhaps those ridiculous boots have skewed your perspective, because you seem to have mistaken me for an errant child." Ciel said. He squared his shoulders and kept his manacled wrists defiantly stilled over the bulge beneath his fly. "Do you honestly believe I'll allow you to _spank_ me with that thing, Sebastian?"

"Yes. And I also believe you rather fancy my boots," Sebastian said with the barest of smirks. "Regardless, the sooner we begin, the sooner we can return to the manor. Now, unfasten your trousers."

"Not bloody likely," Ciel scoffed. His hands twitched.

"Tell me, _My Lord_, who is in control of this situation?" Sebastian slapped the crop's tress across his open palm again.

"Considering I remain tightly tethered to the damned winch and I'm unable to release myself from these blasted manacles, I would suppose _you _are."

"Wrong." Sebastian snapped. "Now unfasten your trousers, or I'll unfasten them for you."

"It's official." Ciel gaped at him. "You've gone stark raving mad. I'm done humoring you, Sebastian. Release me."

"Have it your way, then," Sebastian tilted his chin upward and the winch squealed to life once more.

"What in the Hell do you think you're doing?" Ciel yelled, the chain wresting his wrists up and away from his groin.

"Exactly what you want me to do, it would seem," Sebastian answered, his eyes following the slow upward progression of Ciel's hands until they reached breast level. With another minute tilt of his head, the winch ground to a halt.

"I want you to release me," Ciel spit against gritted teeth even as he realized he was lying through them. Staring up into the smoldering heat of Sebastian's eyes, his heart raced and his blood coursed fast and hot with want rather than anger.

"I know," Sebastian murmured. He worked the buttons of Ciel's fly open, and then slid his trousers and the drawers beneath down over his hips to pool at his ankles. His gaze never wavered, even as his fingertips grazed over the length of Ciel's pulsing erection and sent tingling sparks shooting through his body in every which direction. "That's exactly what I intend to do, Ciel. Whatever it takes. You have my word."

Something in Sebastian's tone touched Ciel like a cool hand to a fevered brow, and he experienced a moment of calm certainty in which he knew his demon _did _understand him, perhaps much better than he understood himself.

_Impossible. It seems I'm the one who's gone completely around the bend._

Sebastian stepped back, his gaze drifting to Ciel's feet, his fingers abandoning their dance over Ciel's cock, leaving him chilled and oddly bereft. "Spread your ankles apart, Young Master, as far as the restraint of those trousers will allow."

Eying the riding crop he'd so loathed when he was young, Ciel's mind spun as he attempted to reconcile the intensity of his desire to feel its dreaded sting. "No."

"So you say, and yet you've complied perfectly," Sebastian chuckled as Ciel dropped his glare to see his ankles were, indeed, spread and stretching taut the waistband of his dropped breeches. "Now, grab hold of that chain and bend over, My Lord."

A shiver skittered over his spine. The heated tension in his groin coiled tighter. Trembling, feeling very much like a stranger in his own skin, Ciel locked his gaze with Sebastian's as he gripped the rusty chain, searching those crimson eyes for the barest hint of amusement or self-satisfaction, for a glimpse of malicious, smug glee that might pull him back to self and free him from this madness, but he saw only a mirror of his own confused desire and the oddest glimmer of trepidation, and it struck him that despite his assured expression, Sebastian looked nearly as lost as Ciel felt.

_Where are we, Sebastian? How did we get here? _

Just as he'd been that night nearly three weeks before by the feel of Sebastian arching up beneath him and gripping so tightly around him, begging him deeper inside as he scalded Ciel's skin with the heat of his spend, by the sound of his name made mantra in impassioned, caramel-coated reverence, by the intoxicating beauty of Sebastian's raw abandon, Ciel was overcome with sudden intensity of emotion. Right now, it would be all too easy to admit to those truths Sebastian had listed, to confess again he'd fallen wholly in love with the demon who would someday utterly destroy him.

"Do I sense a change of heart, Ciel?" Sebastian asked, gently.

"No," Ciel muttered. "And that's the very crux of the problem, isn't it?" Gritting his teeth, he gripped tight to the chain, raised his arms above his head and bent over.

He heard Sebastian sigh, and then the click of those pointed heels as he stepped around behind him. "You're right," Sebastian murmured. He traced his finger from the nape of Ciel's neck and over his spine to its base, leaving a chill of cool, damp air over Ciel's back as his shirt opened in its wake. "And yet, you're so very, very wrong. I hope you're not too terribly disappointed when you realize the lesson you expect to learn is not the one I intend to teach."

Wrists bound, trousers stretched around his spread ankles, his shirt hanging in ruins from either arm, his butler's warm hand exploring his bared backside, his cock twitching hot against his taut and trembling belly, his every nerve buzzing with anticipation, Ciel closed his eyes in attempt to feel completely the utter humiliation wrought by his current state so he might fully elicit the rage and abhorrence he would need to overcome his crippling weakness and regain his lost control over himself and over a demon who now so dominated their partnership he was apparently no longer compelled to heed even direct orders. "Whatever wisdom you feel the need to impart, get on with it. Don't think just because . . ."

Smack!

His whole body flinched and Ciel's eyes flew open at the penetrating sting of the crop's tress against his left buttock. A burst of tingling heat immediately infused his core, tightening his scrotum and shooting a bolt of pleasure though his thrumming cock. Before he could reconcile the pleasure with the pain, the crop struck against his other cheek, intensifying the warring sensations, and Ciel's taut prick jutted out into the cool air, suddenly slick and desperate for friction.

"I'll ask you again," Sebastian crooned. The crop's tress traced the crevice between his buttocks and then gently slapped against his perineum. "Who wields the control, just now?"

"You do," Ciel grunted, shuddering against the maddening desire pulsing out from his core in waves, desire so intense it all but obliterated his humiliation.

"Wrong!" The tress bit hard at the center of his rear, its sting searing through both of his buttocks and straight up his spine. Sebastian's fingers followed its trail up, and then back down, where he rubbed gently at the base, his thumb delving into the cleft.

Thrusting his backside against Sebastian's hand, Ciel moaned, the needs of his overstimulated body trumping his will and the stunned shock of his reeling mind which insisted this was not going at all as planned. "Not wrong," he breathed. "You wield the crop . . .Bastard . . .you're enjoying this . . ."

"Immensely," Sebastian agreed. He grasped Ciel's hips and punctuated his statement by pressing the length of his thick, rigid cock, now obviously freed from the confines of his skin-tight breeches, in between Ciel's buttocks. "I hope to enjoy it much more so, before we've finished."

"In your dreams," Ciel hissed, his flash of anger at the blatant suggestion a direct result of his body's eager mutiny. He'd never allowed Sebastian to dominate him in such a way, and he sure as hell didn't intend to start now, even despite the fact that he was grinding his flushed and stinging backside against the hard, pulsing heat of Sebastian's prick.

"Indeed," Sebastian said, his rich, caramel tone melting through Ciel the way it only did when they were alone and bared of roles and clothing. "And also in yours. But when you master this lesson, Ciel, neither of us need yearn any longer."

He was about to bite back something brilliant. Something along the lines of _you wish, _or, more likely, _ahh,_ but the cock in his divide was suddenly replaced by another slap of the crop smack in the center of his open buttocks, and Ciel screamed instead as fire blazed up his spine and sent snapping sparks dancing out over his skin.

"Shh. Who's in control, _Master?_" Sebastian crooned.

"You are!" Ciel gasped, his cock straining toward his chest, his thighs quivering.

"Wrong." The tress slapped against his left buttock. "Why do you keep giving me the wrong answer, Ciel?"

"Christ, Sebastian," Ciel moaned and attempted to twist toward the assault, not to evade, but because he craved more contact and he ached to see Sebastian's face, to see his expression as he cracked the crop. He was rewarded for his effort with a doubly hard smack to the other cheek and a hand to the shoulder, shoving him back into place.

"Christ has nothing to do with us," Sebastian growled. The crop bit Ciel's arse again, thrice as hard, and this time the pain wasn't soothed by an immediate wave of pleasure. "Do I need to ask again?"

"Fine! I'm in control!" Ciel bellowed, his voice reverberating through the warehouse, yet it wasn't indignant anger he heard when his words washed back over him, but disbelief laced with despair.

"Closer to correct, but still wrong, I'm afraid." Sebastian sighed, and delivered a light slap to Ciel's scrotum.

"Bloody Hell!" Ciel winced. The lick of the tress hadn't hurt, but neither was it pleasant. "What in the Hell do you want from me? There are only two possible answers, and I've given both."

"Wrong." Sebastian sighed, and the crop cracked hard across the center of Ciel's buttocks.

"Ow!" Ciel jerked forward, his confused prick throbbing as it flagged. "Rotten bastard!"

"Did that hurt, Young Master? Perhaps you should order me to stop."

"I _did _order you to stop, imbecile! I ordered you to get me out of these manacles, and you refused!"

"Did you?" Sebastian sounded skeptical, and another smack, lighter this time, bit into Ciel's backside. "I believe your exact words were 'release me.' It felt much more like a request than an order, at that, but, rest assured," A slap to the left, "I'm most happily in the process of honoring your request at his very moment."

"You're not making any sense," Ciel squirmed beneath another lick of the tress, skin flushing with piquing frustration. "What exactly do you assume you're releasing me from, Sebastian? Because it's quite obvious you're not referring to the manacles."

"An excellent question, My Lord. Now we're getting somewhere." Sebastian folded over him, his now bare chest warm against Ciel's chill back, his breath hot and tickling at his ear. "At this rate, we may actually make it back to the manor before sunrise."

"Do you plan on telling me the answer?" Ciel moaned, the whole of his being exulting at the perfection of Sebastian's body blanketing his. Skin on skin, Sebastian's arm wrapped around him, his fingers tracing gentle circles over the contours of Ciel's pectorals . . .it felt so . . . so _right, _and he wanted out of the damned cuffs and off the chain so he could wrap himself around Sebastian and hold him, press him closer, taste the intoxicating warmed-brandy of his mouth, lose himself entirely beneath passion and emotion and sensation and simply be nothing more than _his._

"No, Ciel," Sebastian breathed. "You're going to tell _me_."

Before Ciel wrapped his mind around the impossibility of such a demand, Sebastian's dizzying physicality vanished, the sudden loss of his warm weight punctuated by a bone-aching chill and the clack of stiletto heels.

"What are we doing here, Young Master?" _Clack_, _clack_ went the heels, pacing. Sebastian's movement stirred the air against Ciel's flaming backside.

"Playing out your perverse 'sadistic professor' fantasy, I'd imagine," Ciel muttered. His hollow insides ached now, and it had nothing to do with the chill, damp air.

"Wrong." WHAP! Sebastian chuckled, "While I'll admit to envisioning this very scenario from time to time, this is what _you _wanted tonight, not I."

"You're stark raving!" Ciel groaned, the sting radiating from his left buttock flushing warm over the rest of him, wreaking havoc with his innards, and shuddering through his cock. "Delusional, if you think I _wanted _to be flogged and humiliated by the likes of you!"

"Oh, but you've been asking for it, My Lord," Sebastian chuckled, pacing again, the sound of those heels sparking over Ciel's spine with each sharp click against the floor. "For the past three weeks, you've been demanding, insulting, and impertinent. A right _brat_ simply begging for a proper punishment. If I'm as delusional as you claim, perhaps you should ask yourself why you're deriving such _pleasure _from this treatment."

"Go bugger yourself, Sebastian."

"Why, of course you may have another, Sir." Sebastian said cordially as the crop slapped the center of Ciel's arse. Then it bit twice more in rapid succession, once to each cheek, before stinging again across the middle. "I'll ask once more. What are we doing here?"

Ciel gasped, his body warmed through, his flesh both singing and screaming, his mind seeking a smart retort and only finding the truth. "I don't know."

"Then allow me to direct you toward the answer," Sebastian said. Strong hands grasped his hips and Ciel experienced a sudden weightless vertigo, only realizing his feet had left the floor the moment they settled back upon it. "Look before you, Young Master. What do you see?"

"Corpses," Ciel breathed. His eyes locked on the mutilated bodies that had been previously out of his line of sight, his gaze traveling over the blackening cocks protruding from frozen twin screams as his own throbbed and cried for stimulation, his stomach twisting in a sick knot. _No. I don't want this, I don't want to see this while I'm so. . ._

"A technically correct but woefully insufficient answer," Sebastian declared, and wielded the crop in rapid-fire succession against Ciel's flaming hide. "Be more precise, please."

"Winston brothers," Ciel gasped, mindless, unable to tear his eyes from the horror in front of him, yet his scrotum tightened with pleasure rather than revulsion. "Ripped open . . .mutilated . . ."

"Yes," Sebastian said, softly, and delivered a slap of the crop that was not. "And how did they end up in such a state?"

His skin blazed from tip to toes and a shiver shimmied over his spine as heat flooded his core, his eyes defiantly riveted to the topic of questioning. "You . . .ah . . .you killed them."

"Correct," Sebastian agreed, and the crop bit thrice, regardless. "And why did I do such a savage thing?"

"To save me," Ciel moaned, his answer thoughtless, automatic, his mind slipping as beyond his control as the warring burning and blissful sensations coursing through his body. He shuddered, and his gaze finally pulled from those grotesque faces and landed on bloating throats, one ringed with a dark weal.

"A most superficial answer to be sure, but I'll let it pass," Sebastian's tone matched the feel of the tress against Ciel's ever-tightening scrotum—a sharp little bite followed by a gentle lick. "Answer me why I needed to save you, Ciel."

"Because . . ." The nip and stroke of the tress heighted the blaze in his groin, coiled the tension tighter, sent dangerous waves of pleasure rolling out from his core, waves which threatened to crash and break and roll him completely under. " . . .Sebastian . . ._please . . ._"

"This ends the very instant you order it done, Ciel," Sebastian's voice tingled soft against his ear, his fingers coaxing those waves stronger, higher, as they grazed over his spine. "Why did I need to save you?"

"They caught me. Ambushed. There were two of them," Ciel panted, his body screaming for more contact with the lover it so _painfully _missed, and Sebastian was so close . . .so close, and yet a million miles away . . . "Didn't know. Didn't see . . ."

"Of course you didn't," Sebastian crooned, those fingers tracing up and down Ciel's spine and delving sinuously into the cleft of his buttocks with each pass even as the crop bit and licked at the underside of his bottom. "You weren't _trying _to get yourself tortured, raped and murdered, after all. And yet you faced off with a known psychopath, a wily and accomplished madman with decades of skill, without arming yourself with the most potent weapon in your arsenal. You lied to me about the avenues you'd pursued and the information you'd uncovered, and then, when the moment came to strike, you sent me away. Why?"

The weal around Roger Winston's greying throat mocked him. He'd failed . . . had been beaten at his own game, not by the dead man, but by the demon whose breath tingled warm against his ear, whose constant caresses and taunts, rewarding and punishing, only reiterated the terrible truth he'd discovered when he'd heard his mindless confession that night and then _gloried _in the sense of blessed weightlessness rendered by his utter exposure and relinquished control. "I wanted . . . _Sebastian . . ._"

"Tell me what you wanted, Ciel," Sebastian breathed. The crop licked rhythmically at Ciel's ever-tensing sack, the building pressure straining through his cock and promising to erupt with the slightest provocation. "Did you want to prove the declaration wrenched from the deepest depths of your soul hadn't stripped you of your strength and worth, your power and dominance? So much so you were willing to sacrifice _everything?_"

"Ah . . ._ Seh . . .Sss_," Ciel hissed, his whole body quivering. He was nothing but a bundle of tingling nerves, a mass of perfect and intensifying sensation. Sebastian's hands where everywhere all at once, trailing over his arching back, drawing trails of heat over his abdomen, over his rear and his thighs, and yet the crop still slapped a relentless, chaotic rhythm against his backside. Sebastian was everywhere, surrounding him, and yet he was nowhere, no more tangible than wisps of breath and touch and the barest whiff of spiced autumn, and Ciel inhaled deeply, as if he might somehow capture him thus. Instead, the stench of the warehouse hit him full-bore, and the overpowering mix of fermented damp and fetid rot sharpened the image of Roger Winston's corpse, Sebastian's gift pointing up from its shoulder like a vivid blue accusation. "_No . . ."_

"Or, perhaps your reprehensible behavior tonight and these past weeks, the subconsciously _willful_ ineffectiveness of your _orders,_ was simply your attempt to punish both of us for elating unabashed in the single unburdened moment you've experienced since before we met," Sebastian's lips brushed against Ciel's temple, hands relentlessly inciting his every erogenous zone except for the rigid, pulsing shaft between his thighs.

" . . .Ah . . .I . . ." Glaring up at him, that accusing tie. Sebastian had presented the tie draped around the hilt of the decorative broadsword he'd caught Ciel admiring while they'd visited a silversmith's shop in London the month before his birthday. When Ciel had opened the long box alone with Sebastian that night, the tie had so captivated him with the silly, romantic notion of a Lady's favor gracing a knight's blade he'd not recognized it for what it was until Sebastian slid it from the brass and slipped it around Ciel's neck. _The color matches you perfectly_, Sebastian had said, and when Ciel had muttered some embarrassing rubbish about his unblemished eye being several shades lighter than that of the tie, Sebastian had told him, _it's the very same shade as your soul. . ._

"Talk to me, Ciel. Tell me the name of the demon you've allowed to divide and drive us and . . ."

. . .and when he'd glanced down to see that sapphire silk, so vibrant against the contrast of his white nightshirt, it struck him that it was Sebastian who symbolized the sword, for he had always been his knight, and it was _Ciel's_ favor Sebastian's gleaming representation wore so proudly . . .

" . . . let me help you exorcise and destroy it. Tell me what I need to do . . ."

. . . as if . . .as if he _knew _of that damning truth Ciel repeatedly shoved down into the deepest recesses of his heart and mind and soul, that shaming truth of which he must never, ever speak; as if Sebastian knew and this was his way of saying he accepted his master's foible without condemnation even despite his own infallibility, and the thought had so warmed and soothed Ciel he'd leaned forward and kissed Sebastian with every inch of tenderness and raw devotion he felt in that moment. He'd pulled back to see Sebastian's expression of stunned wonder, to see the desire heating his eyes, and then Sebastian's lips met his again and his knight returned a perfect mimic of the kiss he'd just been given for a heartbeat before deepening it, infusing it with his constant, ready hunger as he pressed forward and lowered Ciel down upon the bed beneath him. A breath later they were both bare, Sebastian stretched out over him, murmuring something softly in a language Ciel had never heard before as his lips grazed over the line of Ciel's jaw, down the column of his throat, to kiss along the ridge of his clavicle before moving lower, his intent to taste every inch of him clear. Those lyrical words his mind couldn't comprehend felt understood by his heart and soul, and Ciel arched up beneath him, his fingers twining within Sebastian's dark hair, begging rather than encouraging, because he'd _craved _this above all else. Even more than seeing his vengeance exacted insult for insult with interest, he wanted to lose himself within this beautiful, magnificent atrocity he so loved, he wanted to give himself wholly, if only for a few blessed moments, to Sebastian . . .

". . . to bring you back to me, because I'll be damned all over again if I let myself . . ."

. . . and it would have been so _easy,_ but when he'd felt the last of his will slipping away, he'd tugged up hard on Sebastian's hair and shifted his weight. With a low, pained moan, Sebastian had acquiesced, rolling onto his back and bringing Ciel with him, arching his slender neck in gorgeous submission. Ciel had taken, then, everything he would not give, not because he didn't want to give himself to Sebastian, but because . . . because he was _afraid_. Terrified that Sebastian, who had always remarked on his strength and determination, who admired his cold calculation and rigid rationality would, afterward, revile him for his utter weakness and depth of repugnant emotion, revile him for the last, thick pulsing thread of his useless and pathetic _humanity_, that, try as he might, he simply couldn't kill. He couldn't . . . wouldn't expect Sebastian to remain beholden to him after discovering his master had become such a wretched disappointment, and so he strengthened his resolve and grasped tight to his control, shoved his weakness and his emotions down deep . . . and he'd persevered, right up until . . .

" . . . lose you now."

. . . he'd lost himself that night, exposed himself down the unworthy marrow of his degraded core . . . and now the tie . . . his touchstone these past weeks, a tangible straw to grasp when he dared to hope the silly romantic notion he'd entertained when Sebastian first draped it around his neck wasn't a notion at all and that perhaps it wasn't just a matter of time before Sebastian abandoned him both body and meager soul now that he'd seen, now that he knew _everything . . . _his favor now lay draped over the corpse of a monster to whom he'd delivered himself, a depraved pig who'd intended to torture, rape and murder him . . . his favor worn by filth in plain view of Sebastian, and the sight was a horrid betrayal, an unforgivable insult, blasphemy . . .

"Sebastian! Don't luh . . ." Pain, both familiar and wholly unexpected, blazed within his right eye. "I order you to remove that obscenity from our sights!"

A sharp intake of breath at his ear preceded a sudden and deafening rustling, as if a huge flock of large-winged birds took to flight all at once. A monstrous shadow engulfed those cast by the dingy overhead lights, and then Ciel saw a massive, fast-encroaching wall of shimmering, ebony feathers before darkness engulfed him completely. Dry warmth replaced the damp chill of the air surrounding him, infused with Sebastian's scent.

Sebastian's arms encircled him, gently guided him upright, and then pressed his back to a heated, bare chest. His embrace tightened, held Ciel snuggly, and made no effort to conceal the thick rod of hot, pulsing iron throbbing against the small of his back. "Not the order I'd expected," Sebastian breathed against his temple, "but welcome nonetheless. Can I be confident your erroneous certainty you no longer possessed such power is now invalidated?"

Ciel trembled against Sebastian, a minute but full-bodied quake he was helpless to quell in the wake of such intense, impromptu introspection and the thrills of desire still coursing through his veins and limbs, intensifying with each heartbeat by his immersion in the totality of Sebastian's form and essence. "I've been an idiot . . . utterly asinine. The moment I felt it, I realized I haven't issued a proper order since . . . I never . . ."

"No, you _haven't_." Sebastian chided, gently, his hands caressing over every inch of Ciel's skin they could reach without loosening his possessive hold. "And although I've pondered very little else these past weeks, I confess I'm still at a loss as to why your irrelevant declaration prompted such . . ."

"_Irrelevant? _Don't be obtuse, Sebastian," Ciel bit. "I confessed that I love you. I confessed that I'm _in love _with you and, in that moment, I exposed to you the full depths of my emotion, the whole of my repugnant weakness. You were there, and I saw that you saw _me _Sebastian, bared and vulnerable."

"No. No, I'm afraid I didn't see what you imagined I saw, at all. Therein lays the source of my bewilderment, though I daresay I'm not the one being _obtuse_. Then again, I'd been so certain it had been the confession itself that vexed you . . . your mistaken assumption it had been a revelation." Sebastian chuckled wryly, and then pressed a kiss to Ciel's temple. "Perhaps I wasn't entirely wrong in that assumption?"

Ciel grunted his embarrassment and relief beneath feigned annoyed disdain. _He knew . . . He knew. How long has he known?_

"The evening of the twenty-ninth, May, 1891. You were convalescing in your chambers, having twisted your ankle that afternoon attempting to dismount that dread beast I couldn't dissuade you from buying while he worked himself up into a right rage."

"Dickens," Ciel supplied the horse's name, his reeling mind stumbling through the thickening pleasure fog and his piqued emotions to the night in question. "He was simply misunderstood . . ."

"He was a menace, and you were happy to be rid of him when Soma took him off your hands whether you care to admit such or not," Sebastian said, his tone smugly amused as he outlined Ciel's left nipple with a lazy fingertip and sent tingling heat rippling all the way to his toes. "Regardless, I'd ordered that ankle wrapped and elevated, and although you argued against, citing all manner of urgent paperwork that simply couldn't be accomplished anywhere but in your study with your feet planted firmly on the floor beneath your desk, you acquiesced. However, it was clear the moment you settled your back into your bed-pillows you had no intention of allowing me to tend to my own tasks. I'd opened and closed the draperies thrice, adjusted two paintings just so, and was in the processes alphabetizing the books in your case by _title, _when it dawned on me you were simply seeking ways to retain my company. I was about to suggest I bring up the chess table when you invited me to sit upon your bedside and asked me to tell you the story of my previous contract."

"Madrid," Ciel murmured. Something taut and aggrieved within him had relaxed beneath the rich, caramel-coated timbre of Sebastian's voice, and the feel of Sebastian pressed to his back in the warm spice-scented darkness transported him all too easily to the setting of the scene, although his body desperately yearned to relive much less chaste memories. "The chicken farmer's wife. Sad, short-sighted woman."

"Indeed. And when I finished with the telling of our brief business arrangement, you asked me, 'what did her soul taste like,' and I told you I thought it rather tasted like chicken." Sebastian nuzzled his nose into the crook of Ciel's neck and inhaled deeply. "Then you asked me what I thought _your _soul will taste like, and I told you there were no words in any language known to man or immortal that would do justice to the glory of such . . ."

"Ambrosia . . . that's the word you gave me when I insisted." Ciel moaned and leaned his head to the side, exposing more of his neck to Sebastian's tongue which laved hard against the shallow cut Winston's knife had made. Not only did he feel that prodding lick straight down to the swollen head of his tortured cock, but when he looked in the mirror tomorrow, he'd see not the barest trace of a mark. _"Sebastian . . ."_

"Mmm," Sebastian hummed against his throat and then kissed the hollow before lifting his head to murmur softly against Ciel's ear, "a paltry comparison, at that. Even so, you fell in love with me that very moment. I saw it in your eyes, and in your soul."

"Perhaps what you saw was merely a flare of the indigestion I'd suffered from the turnips you'd served for dinner," Ciel growled, resting his head back against Sebastian's shoulder and turning his face to seek the glow of his demon's eyes. He gripped the chain, fingers itching to both reach back and thread through Sebastian's hair and stroke over the feathers of their enclosure. "I was still betrothed to Elizabeth then, and I refused to allow myself to entertain any . . . _feelings_ for you whatsoever."

"Ah. I do so admire your steadfast nobility, Young Master," Sebastian purred, his breath vibrating hot over the shell of Ciel's ear and down his spine, "but I believe we've already determined what you _allow _yourself to feel bears no jurisdiction over the reality of the matter. You may not have invited me into your bed until well into your eighteenth year, but you fell in love with me long before, you'd desired me carnally even well before that, and you've loved me with a child's purity of soul from the moment I lifted you from the altar, Ciel."

It was his nature to rebuff such an intimately personal assumption with immediate indignant negation, but Ciel was stunned by the brutal truth of Sebastian's assessment, and when he felt the urge to refute finally rise, he swallowed it back. "You've seen through me since the first. Does such loathsome weakness not disgust you, Sebastian?"

"Oh, _Ciel," _Sebastian breathed, tightening his embrace. "Why should you think I would disparage your love any more than any other emotion that compels and drives you? Haven't I always insisted it is only the fear of those emotions that weaken humankind?"

"Yes. But love is an entirely different animal than rage or . . ."

"No. When acknowledged and wholly accepted, love is every inch as powerful as rage, Ciel. Wars have been waged in the name of love, after all. Bloody massacres, the lot of them." Sebastian chuckled, breathed deep of Ciel's temple, and sighed. "I saw no weakness in your confession. Rather, I saw one brief but glorious moment where you fully embraced an emotion you've shunned and obfuscated for half a decade, acts that served only to undermine the strength of the root from which it stemmed. In that moment I saw you empowered, freed from the binds of doubt and self-castigation, wholly unburdened and nearly invincible. I reveled in your power, Ciel, just as you did, and I ached to become, once again, the vessel through which you wield that power."

A deep, shuddering sigh escaped him, and Ciel slumped within the support of Sebastian's embrace as years of tension loosed all at once and drained out through his feet. "You've turned me to gelatin, you incorrigible, romantic bastard . . . I love you."

"I know."

Heat flushed his cheeks, but the indignant insult burning the tip of his tongue was stilled by sudden weightless vertigo and then extinguished by Sebastian's mouth claiming his, and Ciel forgave the slight he'd perceived despite himself. So long he'd denied himself the taste of Sebastian's kiss he was compelled to feast, to plunder and devour, but a low growl rumbled from Sebastian's chest and gave him pause long enough to feel Sebastian's lips moving against his, possessive but so gentle, his tongue soft and caressing, and rather than lust and hunger Ciel tasted once again the tenderness his demon had mimicked the night of the sword and tie, only now the flavor was true, rich and full-bodied, and laced with more than a hint of something that burned through him like a shot of bourbon and restored his strength.

"Now," Sebastian murmured, "Let's get you out of those manacles."

"No. Not yet." Heat burned Ciel's cheeks again, although this time he didn't feel the least bit indignant. "Sebastian . . . I want you. Here. Now. I want you to take me the way you claimed I wanted you to before . . . Damn it, Sebastian, I want you so badly."

"And so you shall have me," Sebastian said as the manacles fell from Ciel's wrists. "Any which way and as often as you want me, but not here. Not with the stench of that filth permeating my senses. Not when I can still taste his fetid perversion on your skin."

"I don't smell anything but you," Ciel insisted. Turning around again in the dark, he reached out and, at long last, ran his fingers over the thick, silken feathers of Sebastian's enclosing wings. They shivered beneath his touch, as did the chest at his back.

Sebastian moaned. "Let's go home, Lover. We'll share a bath and then a bed. I want to watch you revel in the sight of my pleasure the way you do. It does things to me I can't explain, and you can't see a damned thing in this dark."

"Your wings are doing things to me _I _can't explain," Ciel murmured, running the palms of both hands over the glossy walls, entranced. "Are they _real?"_

"_Yes," _Sebastian hissed, "And if I let you keep doing that, you're going to have me much sooner than either of us truly want."

"I'm quite alright with that," Ciel smiled. He stepped forward out of Sebastian's slackened arms to bury his face against those luscious feathers, only to stop short with a startled cry as they flew open with a deafening snap and rustle. The damp putrescence of the warehouse's atmosphere slammed up against him, the dim light blinding.

"I'm not," Sebastian said from behind him.

He whipped toward the sound of Sebastian's voice and staggered, catching his balance a bare moment before the forgotten trousers puddled around his ankles sent him sprawling. "That was entirely uncalled for," he seethed, glaring at his smirking demon.

"Trust me when I tell you it wasn't," Sebastian said, his smirk faltering not at all beneath his tone of sincerity. "You can ruffle my feathers to your heart's content later. I'll even wear the boots, if you'd like. I know you fancy them."

"Your boots are utterly ridiculous," Ciel lied, dropping his eyes and noting that as he stood bare-assed with his trousers down around his ankles, a shirt half hanging from each wrist, and in a state of more than moderate arousal, he looked utterly ridiculous himself. Cursing under his breath, he ripped his sore wrists free from his destroyed shirt and bent to pull up his breeches.

He was still wrangling his uncooperative cock beneath the buttons of his fly when Sebastian stepped up before him, wearing his butler's livery and now merely an inch taller than Ciel. "Is this better?"

"If I tell you I like the boots, will you ever let me live it down?" Ciel asked, watching Sebastian's expression intently as he fastened his last button.

"Never."

"Then, yes. This is much better."

Sebastian chuckled and shrugged out of his tailcoat. "Turn around."

Ciel complied with an exaggerated sigh. "You might have just retrieved my own coat. Or conjured one out of thin air, for that matter," he said as he slid his bare arms into the tailcoat's sleeves.

"Yes, but this particular garment is infused with my scent," Sebastian pulled the coat up around Ciel's shoulders, "and I'd rather cloak the stench of your molester until we can wash it away, if it's all the same to you. I guarantee our flight back to the manor will be much less turbulent, this way."

Ciel's eyes darted to the corpse of said molester, and lingered once more on his blue tie, twinges of guilt and regret coiling up through his belly.

"You interpreted my intended message correctly, in case you were wondering," Sebastian said, his palms grazing over Ciel's upper arms as he pressed close behind him. "When I draped that tie around the hilt of the sword."

"How did . . ."

"Your order," Sebastian murmured. "Your thoughts and emotions came through with it clearly, as they sometimes do when they're especially intense. Don't give the tie another thought. I'll give you another."

"Don't." Ciel whispered, unable to tear his gaze from the sapphire silk. "Unless it represents reciprocation rather than acknowledgement and acceptance, I don't want another."

Sebastian's hands paused against Ciel's arms, and then fell away. He stepped around Ciel and strode toward the door. "Then you'll have another on the morrow."

Feeling somewhat gelatinous again, Ciel's attention whipped from a now meaningless scrap of silk to the square of his butler's retreating shoulders. Then Sebastian stopped and, without looking back, extended his hand behind him.

Possessed of a surreal sense of weightless calm quiet, Ciel strode forward and twined his fingers through Sebastian's. The feeling only intensified as they exited into the fresh night air and walked silently hand-in-hand down the long weed-choked drive toward the road proper.

It wasn't until they'd reached that dark road that Ciel glanced back over his shoulder at warehouse, spared a thought to the wretched contents within and spoke, "Sebastian."

"Already done," Sebastian replied. He turned and drew Ciel into his embrace. "Ready to go home?"

Wrapping his arms tightly around Sebastian, Ciel nodded. Bodies pressed close, they took to the night sky as the warehouse exploded into flames.

**A/N:** Superficially written in response to this kink meme request on the bb forums: *BDSM themed, bondage & spanking. (Sebastian as the Dominant, Ciel as the submissive brat/pet),* but truly written for **Eglentyne**, a wickedly talented writer without whose encouragement I would have never attempted, much less finished this story. If you haven't read her work yet, you're missing out.


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